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Guy Fawkes' Explosion Would Have Devasted London
Anonymous Coward writes "Experts at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth have worked out for the first time the true extent of the damage Guy Fawkes would have caused if his daring deed had not been foiled on November 5, 1605. " Sorry - history geek/major in me coming out, but this is definitiely one of those major points in history when things Could Have Gone Differently.
For the first time ever my old university is mentioned on Slashdot. I'm so happy!
The Guy Fawkes day was a frightning day for all of us British. Had it turned out differently, things would be different today. Why must we worry about the negative what ifs of history, instead of focusing on the future?
He has been the only person to go the parliament with honest intentions
CJC
*If* he was an expert,
*If* he had it packed in
_Then_ it would've had same effect as TNT
(and so blasted about a km big hole)
So this is a GOOD model.
yada yada.
Seriously, the assumptions they have made are just too far-fetched. It sounds like someone thought of this idea - hey what would've happened if.. -- and then did some calculations, and then put it in a sensational manner to get press.
As Dick Feynman would say, this is something like Cargo Cult Science - no true scientific backing for this
And let's not forget the South Bank ;-)
Experts at the Slashdot labratory have worked out for the first time the true extent of the possible damage to the University of Wales in Aberystwyth's web server due to the posting of a story about Guy Fawkes
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
err....it would have been a major twin-towers scale disaster, London was one of the biggest cities in the world at that stage, and westminster palace was almost at the centre.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
Not much to destroy? Only the newly fledged parliament and all the MPs. It would be like blowing up the Senate building with all the people in it. Sure there wasn't much else around but this may have completely changed the course of British history.
BBC has a nice website about it too. (much more informative)
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
True, but actually the effects of a large gunpowder explosion in the London of 1605 would likely be a lot more devastating than you, or the article, suggest.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Yeah? So? Where are the facts? It's hardly descriptive. This is really one of those `What-If?' things. They should have just used the What If Machine.
What if SCO wins?
What if Microsoft takes over Google?
What if Gore won the election?
What if Einstein wouldn't have been born?
What if Linus was killed in a car crash?
What if RMS was sane?
What if the French won the war?
What if Bender was really giant?
What if life was more like a video game?
Does it matter?
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
I don't know, but it's definitiely not in my dictionary...
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
the 2,500kg of gunpowder Guy Fawkes was found with, would be equivalent to the same amount of TNT today
So TNT is no better then gunpowder? What is so special with this guys gunpowder?
Question authorities
I remember reading something somewhere a few years ago that offered proof that Guy Fawkes was framed. Anything to this?
I also understand that Brits seem to have tossed out the whole Nov 5th thing for the more commercial American import of Halloween, but haven't really picked up on the concept, with many kids showing up on pumpkinless doorsteps sans costume.
Seems to me that Guy Fawkes Night would be a much bigger blast!
He said the physicists used the weight of explosive to work out how it would affect its surroundings.
"We know that the more explosive we have the more energy will be released when the charge is set off.
"From the pressure pulse generated by the explosion, we can tell if windows are going to be smashed or if whole buildings will be demolished," he said.
He explained that the further from the blast the lesser the effects until only a faint bang is audible.
Obviously they had their top minds working on this.
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
At may 13th 2000, a fireworks storage facility (located in the middle of a residential area, of all places) in the city of Enschede in the east of the Netherlands went skyhigh. Some general info is here.
Whereas the London event would have been equivalent to 2.5 tons of TNT, the Enschede explosion was estimated as being equivalent to anywhere between 5 tons and 15 tons of TNT (between 2e10 and 6e10 Joules, and at maximum about 1/1000th of Hiroshima in terms of energy). In the event, about 100000 kg of fireworks detonated, set off by a detonation in one of the central containers. The energy in the explosion was estimated by analyzing images of the shockfront wave set off by the explosion.
The result was similar to what has been predicted for London: in Enschede, about 1200 houses were obliterated and 22 were killed.
Fortunately, the event led to changes in legislation and much stricter requirements for such dangerous storage facilities near residential areas.
On a personal note: I was about 6 km from Ground Zero when the event happened, and the sound from the explosion was very, very impressive even at that distance!
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erm... no. Gunpower is the saltpeter mixture, TNT is tri-nitro-toluene, which is completely different. More like nitroglycerene if i recall.....
...the little town of Lewes in East Sussex, where they burn an effigy of the Pope every year (+ 2 topical others), and have rocket fights, a parade through town and lots of home-made explosives going off left, right and centre.
;-)
Any tradition that involves burning the Pope can't be all that bad.
"He [Dr. Thomas] added: "If Guy Fawkes was an expert in explosives and so knew what he was doing and had the gunpowder confined in barrels and well packed-in, it could have been almost as powerful as the equivalent TNT explosion so this is a fairly good model," he said."
The explosion model assumes Fawkes was an expert in explosives and would have packed the barrels really tight instead of just using the barrels as is...so by that logic there would have been more gunpowder there than historical attributed. I suppose it could have packed in there with nails and steel balls but then there's less gunpowder than the model (maybe)
Dampness could have been a factor also, generating heat, fire, and explosive pockets rather than an all out boom.
So, yeah, there could have been a big explosion but the polictical implications would have far outreached the physical damage or collateral damage.
It qould have destroyed the Houses of Parliament, including all the MPS, the Lords and the King who were there for the state opening of parliament; Westminster Abbey; and the main royal palaces of Whitehall and St James's (Buckingham wasn't built yet). So the effect on the government & ruling class would have been devastating.
On the other hand, the main commercial, shipping and population centre of London at the time was the City of London, which is a couple of miles from Parliament (technically in the City of Westminster), so the direct effect on London's population would have been small. The knock-on might have been huge, though. Just as 9/11 may have ended lower manhattan's dominance of the finance sector in NYC, it's possible that London's importance as a trading centre would have been seriously dented.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
*If* he was an expert,
There's a link at the end of the article where they point out that Fawkes was brought into the plot because...he was an expert in gunpowder.
*If* he had it packed in
This was not a spur of the moment event. There was more than enough time to ensure the gunpowder was correctly placed and packed.
> It would be like blowing up the Senate building with all the people in it.
Huh? Our Senators are cowards who stay at home and have 'voice votes' when its time to pay their owners. See DMCA vote or yesterday's 87 billion Iraq vote. Almost 90 senators stayed home for the Iraq vote.
Sorry to get OT, but voice votes are as close to a bomb as far as democracy is concerned.
If Microsoft hadn't offered a bounty for his capture?
If anyone's interested in other results of conventional explosions, take a look at the texas city explosion in 1947 when a ship carrying fertilizer (supposedly, there is some debate about whether there was more behind it) detonated, or the fauld explosion in the UK in 1944 where 3670 tonnes of stored bombs exploded underground
It's a perfectly cropulent word ;-)
If only they had these bunch of monkeys conduct this sort of research on that first attempt the terrorists tried at blowing up the World Trade Center with that bomb in the garage, prehaps they'd have figured those towers were "collapsable".
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
What's wrong with that? I hate vasts! Out with the vasts!
(Apparently, you're history buffs, but not spelling buffs.)
Please help metamoderate.
"Devasted"- To make un-vast, ie to reduce in vastness. To smallify.(qv)Unbiggen.
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
London might have had a population of only 75000 people in 1605, but an explosion with a blast radius of 1/3 of a mile and a damage radius of 2/3 of a mile right in the centre of the city would have probably killed and wounded more people than the WTC attack did.
The Halifax Explosion is one of the most impressive disasters in history. Often billed as the largest non-nuclear explosion prior to the atomic age, two ships, one loaded with war ammunition, collided right in the middle of Halifax Harbour in Nova Scotia. It exploded, killing over 1600 people. The anchor from one of the ships was found 5 kilometers away. The explosion shattered windows and rang churchbells in my hometown of Truro, over 100 km away.
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It's a school of whales, not a university, you insensitive clod!
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
Actually in 1605, Parliament was on the periphery of London. Back in those days, London was still concentrated around the original "City of London" -- a few miles downstream from Westminster. Almost the entire population lived and worked in or just outside "the City" (today it's the financial district of London). Linking the Houses of Parliament and the City was the Strand, which was lined by aristocrat's mansions, and (nearer to parliament) Whitehall, then the site of the main royal palace. So the devastation would have barely affected most of London's buildings or population.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
He explained that the further from the blast the lesser the effects until only a faint bang is audible.
Wow, this guy's got amazing powers of observation!
--Stachel
Stachel
Quoting from the article
Bear in mind that even if only a few thousand people died in the initial explosion (there were hundreds of MPs in westminster, plus all the support staff) that there weren't firemen in the same sense as we have now. There would probably have been a fire sweeping london, like Great Fire of 1666:
"On Sunday morning, the 2nd September 1666, the destruction of medieval London began. Within 5 days the city which Shakespeare had known was destroyed by fire. An area of one and a half miles by half a mile lay in ashes; 373 acres inside the city walls and 63 acres outside, 87 churches destroyed (including St. Paul's Cathedral) and 13,200 houses." source
That fire started in a bakery. I think that Guy Fawkes could have done pretty well too.
I'd have thought things would work out differently. However, the comment touches on a dichotomy of theories on history.
- View 1: "Things" are primarily formed by important events, individuals, accidents of nature.
- View 2: "Things" are primarily predestined by forces of geography, sociology, psychology, etc. Events, even on the scale of London blowing up, are insignificant overall. They may delay things and alter them in minor ways, but the trend will be as before.
Historical note: By the time of plot, Guy Fawkes had been living in Spain for a while, and had changed his name to Guido.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Not even close. TNT is "tri-nitro toluene", is a pale yellow crystalline, aromatic hydrocarbon compound that melts at 81 C. It is way more stable than nitroglycerine (not related to gunpowder either). The specific combustion energy of TNT is 4.6 MJ/kg. I'm not sure what gunpowder formula Fawkes used, but I doubt that it could have been as effective as TNT.
Or 1,250 really, really fast CD-Rs.
Money for nothing, pix for free
if they want fireworks, they should celebrate the fourth of july like the rest of the world! on a serious note, halloween's commercialism has little to do with pumpkins and everything to do with candy.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
I dunno if its more refined nowadays, but Nobels dynamite was originally some kind of earth and/or clay mixtuere soaked with nitroglycerin. The dirt stabalized it so it wasn't so volitile and required a cap to be detonated. IIRC Nobel discovered this after spilling some nitroglycerin on the ground or something like that. But you are correct gunpowder is quite different chemically from TNT, dont know about explosive power(is there a SU for that?) but i think its safe to assume TNT has more explosive power, otherwise originaly the miners would have been blasting with gunpowder, not nitro.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I was under the impression that Guy Fawkes day was celebrated. Why would you celebrate over something like that?
Two things.
1. Is there a more Welsh name than Geraint Thomas? Answers on a postcard, please.
2. What kind of a department is the Centre for Explosion Studies? Can you get degrees in that? Sounds like a fun course.
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In 1605, Guy Fawkes (also known as Guido - yes, really) and a group of conspirators attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
After Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, English Catholics who had had a rough time under her reign had hoped that her successor, James I, would be more tolerant of their religion. Alas, he was not, and this angered a number of young men who decided that violent action was the answer.
One young man in particular, Robert Catesby suggested to some close friends that the thing to do was to blow up the Houses of Parliament. In doing so, they would kill the King, maybe even the Prince of Wales, and the Members of Parliament who were making life difficult for the Catholics. Today these conspirators would be known as extremists, or terrorists.
To carry out their plan, the conspirators got hold of 36 barrels of gunpowder - and stored it in a cellar, just under the House of Lords.
But as the group worked on the plot, it became clear that some innocent people would be hurt or killed in the attack. Some of the plotters started having second thoughts. One of the group members even sent an anonymous letter warning his friend, Lord Monteagle, to stay away from the Parliament on November 5th. Was the letter real?
The warning letter reached the King, and the King's forces made plans to stop the conspirators.
Guy Fawkes, who was in the cellar of the parliament with the 36 barrels of gunpowder when the authorities stormed it in the early hours of November 5th, was caught, tortured and executed.
It's unclear if the conspirators would ever have been able to pull off their plan to blow up the Parliament even if they had not been betrayed - some people think the gunpowder they were planning to use was so old as to be useless. Since Guy Fawkes and his colleagues got caught before trying to ignite the powder, we'll never know for certain.
These days, Guy Fawkes Day is also known as Bonfire Night. The event is commemorated every year with fireworks and burning effigies of Guy Fawkes on a bonfire.
Some of the English have been known to wonder whether they are celebrating Fawkes' execution or honoring his attempt to do away with the government.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
It's not like London of 1605 was anything like the London of today.
..." Link
...
Sixty one years later the Great Fire of London destroyed 80% of the city or "... over 13,000 houses, 89 churches and 52 Company (Guild) Halls. [including] Old St. Paul's Cathedral
OK, it's not a blink of the eye, but it's almost the same length of time between the London of the Blitz and the London of today
I moved to London recently, but no one has been able to answer my question about Guy Fawkes with certainty: Are Londoner's celebrating because Fawkes tried to blow up parliament, or because he was caught before he could?
More like 200,000.
siener's youtube channel
Catholics have been oppressed and scapegoated in England ever since Henry the 8th decided he wasn't getting enough nookie, and broke with the True Church.
Henry got plenty of nookie -- lots and lots.
What he didn't have was an heir to the throne -- a child (preferably male) born to a woman who happened to be his wife.
-kgj
An explosion of this magnitude (over 2.5 kilotonnes of TNT) did explode in a city back in 1917. Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada was devestated by an explosion of a munitions ship on its way to Europe. The explosion killed almost 2000 people, injured over 9000 and rattled dishes about 300 km away. The explosion was so large, it was actually studied by Oppenheimer and his crew as a model of how to deliver the atomic bomb. From this, they determined that damaged is greatly enhanced when the bomb is exploded above ground. If you want to find out more, just go here.
This doesn't seem quite accurate. It looks like they just added up all the energy from the explosion and calculated how far the shock wave would reach in ideal conditions.
The problem is that the conditions were far from ideal for maximum damage to the city. The article mentions that the gunpowder was under the building, which means underground. When something explodes either buried or in a ditch it explodes up not out.
I have no doubt it would have demolished the building it was under, but I have sincere doubts that it would have done a lot of damage to buildings that were as far away as 1/3rd of a mile. They didn't seem to factor in the channeling effect of the XXXX tons of earth surrounding the explosive.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
No shit Sherlock!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
http://tinyurl.com/tnu3 (yahoo news)
www.bonfirenight.net
No karma whoring to see here...move along.
What were you expecting?
1. Dai Rhys-Jones :-)
2. A really cool place to work
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Thanks to Mr. Stephenson, history is now cool! I am fairly certain we are about to see more posts about mid-17th to early 18th century in particular.. the tastes may change as more volumes of Baroque Cycle come out, of course.
Toulouse Explosion Losses May Total $840 Million
Reposted from above:
www.bonfirenight.net
tinyurl.com/tnu3
What were you expecting?
It's been discussed over the years...
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
relatives to Fawkes were arrested today for connection to the terrorist network al-Qaida....
is definitiely in there?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
TNT, or tri-nitro-toluene, is a high explosive. It detonates, producing a violent shock wave.
High explosives are more violent in their effects than low explosives. That's why they are so popular with the military. They do a better job of breaking things.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I recognized that cogent description. My wife wrote it.
The rest of the article is here:
www.bonfirenight.net/gunpowder.php
She was interviewed about Bonfire Night by the Assoc. French Press:
http://tinyurl.com/tnu3 (Yahoo News)
(My wife is a bigger geek than I...Yay!)
What were you expecting?
I've heard this exclaimed several times, by people you never would have thought to have had an opinion about politics, on college campuses and various other establishments where people consume oxidants.
> Obviously they had their top minds working on this.
That's the first thing that came to my mind, too. I think he's also a founding member of the Royal Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things.
One of my mates at Uni, who was thoroughly english and denied any sugestion of Welshness, nonetheless bears the name Gareth Rhys Frowen-Williams. Which is a pretty strong contender.
Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot, by Lady Antonia Fraser, chronicles the events leading up to the Gunpowder Plot, and the effects afterwards on the English psyche. According to an excerpt from the book, even Shakespeare's Macbeth was influenced indirectly by the conspiracy.
Had Fawkes and company been able to pull it off, it would have rivaled the reaction of New Yorkers after 9/11.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Try figuring out why New Zealanders celebrate Guy Fawkes Day as well.
Okay, fairly obvious, all the ex-pats, British colony, all that...but, more to the point, it's just a really good excuse to let off fireworks and burn enormous bonfires. And what kiwi doesn't like that?
Nobel was responsible for dynamite (stabilized nitroglycerine), not TNT.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Back in WW2, the RAF had a huge ammo depot called the Fauld.
g e2_lge.j pg
l dc rater.htm
e r. htm
On November 27, 1944, there was an accident and it blew up.
This is the supposedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in recorded history.
3670 tons of bombs went up in an explosion that was seismically recordable in Casablanca
The crater was half a mile across.
78 people killed.
A photo:
http://www.historicairphotos.com/g_uk/ima
Some informative links with other photos:
http://www.carolyn.topmum.net/tutbury/fauld/fau
http://freespace.virgin.net/kehla.barnes/disast
OK, it's not a blink of the eye, but it's almost the same length of time between the London of the Blitz and the London of today ... ... and not that much longer than the journey time from London to Manchester by train.
"In one of the more peculiar of English habits, Guy Fawkes is celebrated with his own day of national remembrance for his role in a failed scheme to dispose of King James I and the House of Lords. You'd think they'd celebrate the foiler of the attempt rather than one of its enactors, but then "1st Earl of Salisbury Day" or "Lord Monteagle Day" just don't have the same ring."
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
How does he explain the name then? :)
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look it up--
the first time anyone figured out "hey, ANFO blows up!"
a transport SHIP full of ammonium nitrate bags had become contaminated by fuel oil.
The port city of Texas City underwent catastrophic, sudden zoning changes.
I don't remember the amount, but a few tens of pallets of ANFO is a respectable amount, much less the possible THOUSANDS of pallets. Lord, what a bang.
So, burning the Pope in effigy is not an anti-Catholic sentiment? Hmm....
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Thelma, I'm not making ANY deals.
As to the response, well, we have a good parallel for that, don't we? Guy Fawkes launched a religiously motivated attack at heart of the the "infidel" symbol of power. So did Usama bin Laden, and given what happened there, in the context of the times another knee-jerk purge of English Catholisism would almost certainly have ensued.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Usually something along the lines of the classic 'ooh look, a goodyear blimp' approach.
Penny for the guy?
It has been surmised by some historians that James' aides, and not Guy Fawkes, planted the explosives only to have them found. The English people were pretty sceptical of a mostly-Catholic Scot ruling their country (remember that because of the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France, the Scottish nobility was about 90% French as every Scottish king married a French princess for many generations, and the French princesses were all Catholic), and James I of England needed to prove that he was (1) not Catholic but rather C of E; and (2) primarily James I of England and only secondarily James VI of Scotland.
So anyway, some surmise that his advisers knew nothing would prove his non-Catholicism better than some Catholic zealot trying to kill him. Of course that was the result, that the C of E English largely accepted James I until his death as loyal both in terms of religion and nationality. Of course things went a little differently for his son (and grandson too)...
As a European historian, I've always found Stuart England and its brief reprieve during the Commonwealth to be the most fascinating part of English history. Perhaps it's because they were just so untrustworthy and untrusted...
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
Enough of the comparison with modern attitudes and crises. The research made a shade too many assumptions (eg: that the explosion would be overground, which it obviously wouldn't be) and is therefore questionable from an "alternative history" perspective.
Nonetheless, it demonstrates that Guy Fawkes and the other plotters were intent on something seriously spectacular, far beyond the popular story. This is not a tale of amateurs and wannabes. This is a tale about experts with considerable experience in their fields, with carefully-laid plans, and a definite goal.
The key question raised is the goal. The implication of the articles is that mere removal of the King was not the sole objective. They could have done that with a fraction of the resources and a fraction of the risk. No, they wanted something more. We'll never know what that "more" was, but this research does suggest that major destabilization of London could have been the target.
If this is the case, then the implication is that the conspiricy stretches further than traditionally viewed. Why destabilize a country? Well, the usual reason is to launch a coup. But five or six men aren't going to succeed on that. This suggests that they may have expected some kind of follow-up, probably from France, who could seize control of the country in the chaos.
That's way outside of the expertise or means of the known conspirators, but well within the means (and inclinations) of numerous religious factions, former royal houses, and wannabe royal houses. This would imply that the entire Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot was a part of a much larger plan. Very plausable for the politics and situation at the time, and would explain the data.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's a shame they had to use a computer to simulate it. It would have been much more fun to pack 36 barrels into the cellar of a disused house somewhere in the middle nowheere (Like some unused corner of a large estate in the highlands of Scotland, for instance), and blown it up.
That would have been cooooool...
And if senators spent all their time in washington then all the people at home would complain about that.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
How it would have effected the Pilgrims sailing from Plymouth, given that Plymouth is a couple of hundred miles from London (I don't know how far exactly I'm a Northerner) is debatable. However if the Pilgrims hadn't sailed it would have meant that Amercicans would have had to make up some other myths about the founding of their country.
No but, yeah but, no but...
In the 70's an oil cracking plant in NJ caught fire and blew up. I was living in Brooklyn at the time and had a view out my window in the direction of Staten Island. I heard the explosion and saw the sky lit up red from the flames. (My first thought was that the Russians had dropped THE bomb and missed the target!).
Later heard that the force of the blast blew out windows in Staten Island.
They aren't always that dramatic. Fate can turn on some pretty small things. I was in a contemplative mood recently, and I traced back my career path, and the two jobs I'm currently doing are directly attributable to small things that I did or experienced years back. Now, I'm not an important person in the scheme of the world, but I can recognize the small things that had a big impact on my life.
By todays definition, does this count as a "Weapon of mass destruction" then? As horrible as the damage would been, it seems that phrase is highly overused from the day when it just meant Nukes.
The energy of explosion of TNT is 3.9 MJ/kg while black powder has 2.8 MJ/kg. Black powder is low-explosive. It rather burns quickly than explodes so it is usually not used as an explosive. However, large amounts of black powder (especially well packed) can explode and the effects can be comparable to TNT (but never equal to).
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
My BS detector needle is hugging the high end again!!!!
FWIW, a high explosive is one where the detonation wave exceeds the speed of sound in the explosive so that it blows up, so to speak before it flies apart. High explosives do not need compression, but low-explosives do. This is why black powder goes off in a phut unless it is compressed so that it doesn't fly apart until all parts are reacting.
See my journal, I write things there
The knock-on might have been huge, though.
Yep: massacre of anyone sharing the same religion as Guy Fawkes, leading to two-sided clash of faiths that would rapidly have drawn in other countries and had an impact far beyond the initial location of the event.
Just like 9/11 in fact.
Ade_
/
Big Bubbles (no troubles) - what sucks, who sucks and you suck
I think this came from "Explosion Physics for Dummies," or "Guido's guide to Explosive Physics: Italian food and politics don't mix."
If you RTFA, they have a poll as well, asking "Should fireworks be banned", just like if that article shows a reason to. :-) Yes, terrorists could buy enough fireworks to blow up the Westminster Hall! Ban them!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
...how Guy Fawke's drawing in the linked article looks like Osama Bin Laden?
Um. There are two general categories of explosives; low-order and high-order. When someone says "high explosives," they are technically referring to the latter, or they are misusing the term. Different explosive compounds burn at different rates; the gases given off by the burn is what produces the force of the blast. The faster the rate of burn, the more destructive an explosive compound is, all other things being equal. Gunpowder, which is meant to propel projectiles, burns slowly and therefore is low-order explosive. If it burned too quickly, the projectile wouldn't have time to accelerate and get out of the way, and pressure would spike inside the cannon/barrel....BOOM! This is why nobody makes bullets that are propelled by dynamite or C4. TNT, on the other hand, is not intended for this use, but is rather intended to blow things up; it has a much faster burn rate, and is a high-order explosive.
So, with that said, how the hell can 2,500 kilograms of 17th-century gunpowder have the same destructive force as the same amount of 20th-century TNT?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Centre for Explosion Studies!! Now there is a cool major.
Bob: Hi, what's your major?
Jane: Theater. How about you?
Bob: Explosion Studies.
Jane: Wow, that is soooo cool. Wanna go out tonight?
Doesn't work that way with CS I can tell you. Seriously, was there ever a cooler thing to major in? I would have even dropped out of CS to be able to blow things up. They also get to study all the great explosions of all time.
I wonder what kind of job Explosive majors get? Cool stuff like special effects, building demolition, pyrotechniques, rodent control. I think I missed my true calling in life.
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m0smithslash
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Wasn't Aberystwyth the castle that Macaulay did his book on?
It's also the name of one of the better hymn tunes out there.
All's true that is mistrusted
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
Come on, you know how the press gets everything completely wrong if you try to give them too much detail... you have to reduce any issue to a 3rd grade level for them... even then they are likely to screw up the few details you give them.
In 1605 they didn't have ministries and civil servants. There was no Prime Minister before the 18th century and no Civil Service until the late 19th centurs. Back then the King ran the government personally, and if he couldn't make laws without Parliament's consent, he could ignore ones he didn't like. It was only in 1689 that Britain truly became a constitutional monarchy, with Parliament in charge.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
I also understand that Brits seem to have tossed out the whole Nov 5th thing for the more commercial American import of Halloween There's a typo there. What you meant was: I also understand that Brits seem to have tossed out the Halloween thing for the more commercial American import of US Halloween ... for indeed Hallowe'en (all hallow's[saints] eve) has been celebrated in Scotland and the north of England for generations.
Children would dress up and go round houses telling jokes, singing songs and reciting Spike Milligan in exchange for sweets, fruit and nuts. Valid enterprise through the dramatic arts.
Of course, imported television programmes put an end to that.
Now "kids" go down the "sidewalk" knocking on doors and saying "Trick or Treat", which is roughly equivalent to "nice car -- shame if anything should happen to it".
And of course we import those nasty sickly pumpkin things (what an export that must be for the ol US of A) instead of using the traditional housing for a halloween lantern: a turnip. And no, it's not called a swede -- it's a turnip.
Hal.
(Grumpy old twentysomething.)
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
This was just another bullshit promotional activity for the Bush reich, and as per usual, everybody is swallowing it whole. "Ooooh. Terrorists are scaaaaaaary! I don't want my rights and freedoms anymore."
I think my favorite part is that Fawkes was caught through century-old law enforcement practices (which did not include RFIDing every man, woman and child in the country), while the FBI of three years ago were very deliberately prevented by higher-ups from stopping 9-11 in the regular course of their jobs. (Couldn't have the know-nothing, bottom-teir officers getting in the way of the biggest power-grab in recent history, now could we?)
-FL
Texas City was a nice one too...
t m
http://www.texas-city-tx.org/docs/history/exp.h
Some how I don't think that anyone will turn anyone in to microsoft. no matter what theprice is. after al who would want to help them out.
I'm guessing to get a degree there you simply have to be alive at the end of the programme.
Anybody want a peanut?
He lost (aka got caught), therefore he is a terrorist. If the local gov't had been overthrown (or in this case, I suppose much of them just blown up) without major damage to other innocents, history may have been hailing him as a hero or at least a martyr - especially in consideration of the terrible acts perpetrated by the gov't at the time.
The House of Lords was and is the same: however, the date chosen for the explosion was the State Opening of Parliament, when King James I and all the Lords and Commons (aka MPs) would have been present.
(this is not a
There's some extra verses to the traditional rhyme that you don't ordinarily hear (for non Brits, it usuall finishes at 'should ever be forgot').
:)
Remember, remember,
The Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot;
I see no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot,
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'Twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament;
Three score barrels of powder below
Poor old England to overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and lighted match
Holler Boys, holler boys make the bells ring,
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the King.
And what shall we do with him?
BURN HIM!
I attended the celebrations in Lewes, Sussex a few years ago where a crowd gathers in the town square late at night to recite the rhyme. IIRC the locals all seemed to know even more verses that went on about hanging, drawing and quartering him...
Would have gone again this year, but the Warchowski brothers interfered with my plans
I recall visiting New Zealand years ago, and seeing a Fourth of July-style party on GF day. I asked what the celebration was for, and was told someone had years ago tried to blow up parlement and had nearly gotten away with it, too. A few years later, a Brit told me how GF day was a celebration meant to memorialize how an ancient plot to blow up parliment had been foiled. The contrast was so striking I forgot my manners. He never will understand why I sniggered.
Gun powder is Nitroglycerin.
Uhm, no.
Nitroglycerin is a clear oily substance formed by adding nitrate groups to glycerin, a common base for lipids (fats). Nitroglycerin will even burn brightly (in fact, some dimwitted mine workers used it in their lamps, as it produced a better flame than ordinary lamp oil).
Gunpowder is a dry mixture of sulphur, saltpeter, and ordinary coal.
Gunpowder is a do-it-yourself-in-a-heartbeat recipe. Nitroglycerin is not. (Well, technically it's not very hard to make, but the process is far from safe.)
In any case, they are absolutely not to be confused with each other. That will result in anything from a major embarrasment to a Darwin Award.
"Where's the kaboom? There was _supposed_ to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!"
Well, in one part of Canada, anyway. On the island of Newfoundland, which didn't become a province of Canada until 1949, it's called bonfire night.
"Clean up the air and treat the animals fair" - Captain Beefheart
Substantially different numbers are published (I found 75,000, 140,000 and 200,000), I guess demographics wasn't high on the priority list in 1600, and these are all estimates. To be on the safe side I picked the lowest guess I found. :)
Anyone else have fun as a youth making your own black powder or other home-made fireworks? If so, what did you blow up?
[^_^]
Yea, like that dammned butterfly that flaps its wings in Brazil and fucks up the weather in Scotland...
Damn, that little bug is working overtime.
Something similar happened in Canada during WW1; December 6th, 1917 to be exact.
"The Mont Blanc, a French steamer, was 330 feet long and 40 feet wide. Her cargo of explosives was bound for the fighting in Europe by way of Bordeaux, France. And what a cargo it was...! The manifest of the Mont Blanc reads like a chemistry experiment:
2300 tons of wet and dry picric acid;
200 tons of TNT;
35 tons of benzol (stored on the open decks); and
10 tons of gun cotton."
CBC even has a $ value breakdown, roughly 3.6 million US 1917 dollars -- an amazing amount to explode in Halifax harbour.
Nice details + pictures here..also, another page detailing the timeline and some injuries.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
For something on a somewhat related note, a good read is Ruled Brittania by Harry Turtledove.
It's about how Britain would have been IF the Spanish Armada would have been able to get past the British fleet and all those pesky fireboats. After the Spanish defeats the weaker British army, a puppet govt is set up by the children of Phillip I, and the English Inquisition is conducted by the once banished Catholic Bishop of Canterbury.
A really good read for those interested in what could have been.
Thanks a lot! I feel much safer now, esp. considering I live about 8 miles away from Gaydon, where the army base there is *the* biggest munitions dump in the country (sorry, UK). Although we're not exactly in the know about what they have stored there, but it wouldn't be pretty if that went up.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Great comment, particularly as we have a Catholic Prime Minister and considering the current lawsuits against Catholic priests in Boston...
For the record, I think they're all terrorists.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Name != genetic lineage
Name != culture
You really don't understand how the legislature works. The Iraq funding bill was debated and worked out two weeks ago, this was just the approval of the conference committee's fixing of the discrepancies between the House and Senate bills.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
Seems like the smell is similar to Iraq today.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Yes. I know. It's an annual celebration in England.
I was referring to the fact that Bush timed his visit so that he could profit from the event in such a way. Guy Fawkes would never get press coverage in America otherwise.
-FL
I saw this story and thought "ehh, mildly interesting". Then I noticed on my Simpsons wall calendar that today is Guy Fawkes Day. It is quite a nice calendar, every day has birthdays of variously famous people (today is Myron Floren - 1919, Art Garfunkel - 1941, Gram Parsons - 1946). It also has other interesting days listed, such as tomorrow being Saxaphone Day, and Friday being Arbor Day in Samoa. It is quite an interesting calendar, and several times it has sparked my interest to look up something on the net.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There was a mini series about this explosion about two weeks ago. Take a look at the freight manifest for the ship. More than half of the cargo on that ship was explosive. To date it is the single largest non nuclear explosion. Period.
Ride recklessly only when safe to do so.
Riiiiiight. And nobody would have noticed that the whole area was radioactive way beyond normal background.
It was certainly more destructive - no trace was found of at least one locomotive caught in the blast.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Looking back I'm horrified - I was raised to make an effigy of a person and symbolicly burn him at the stake because he's Catholic ... what were people thinking (and it's gone on for 300 tears!) - and peopl,e wonder why there are generations long religious wars ... it's because people wont let their children forget
My favorite limerick (prompted by the fact that the university that the professors are from is the University of Aberystwyth):
There was a young girl from Aberystwyth
Who took grain to the mill to get grist with.
The miller's son, Jack,
Laid her flat on her back
And united the organs they pissed with!
(Apologies to anyone from what I am sure is a very nice town, but I couldn't help passing this one on!)
Sigh. My id isn't prime. 2 2 2 2 2 3 5 313
Celebrating 400 years of religious intolerance.
I prefer to let off my fireworks at the new year.
A latent existence
Language mix-up on my part. In my native tongue, the unspecified "coal" is the chemically pure element.
Ah, the "Centre for Explosion Studies" ...the dream of every stratboy in the interpol department come true!
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
From the department of reduncancy department...
As opposed to all those nuclear explosions prior to the atomic age?
Sean
err - I can't type today .... that should be '300 years' though '300 tears' is somehow appropriate (and I guess it's really 400 years)
The BBC website has been going on for a week how fireworks have to be banned in the UK for the usual reasons, ignorance, danger, ileagal use and the ever popular "it's for the children." I say let the UK have it's fireworks. How about enforcing the laws instead? We have had all our fireworks "safe and saned" here by the ruling elites and they are almost worthless. I hope the UK can hang on to it's "crackers, bangers and rockets." Tossing JDs and YOBS into the can would be better. Gun Powder Rebellion may not just be a Guy Fawkes thing otherwise one can hope.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
You can still go to Gordons Wine Bar down near Embankment Station where Guy Fawkes apparently used to drink. Awesome place that just reeks of history - or was that BO?
I think the term "terrorist" is only usefully applied to the deliberate targetting of non-combatents to gain political leverage. (Without the political leverage goal you have simple thrill killing)
I think attacking political/military figures is a legitimate act of war/resistance/whatever. Terrorizing Nazis is good, attacking civilians compelled to cooperate with them (because you are too feeble/cowardly to attack Nazis) is bad. If you are doing your job, the enemy will be scared of you, but that doesn't make you a terrorist.
Considering that the 9-11 attacks were directed towards targets of strategic importance economically and governmentally, were the attackers freedom fighters? If the civilians are seen as participating in activities counter to the attackers goals, is attacking them a terrorist activity? For example, would threatening or killing civilian informants to the Gestapo be terrorism? Terrorists nearly always have political goals that they are trying to acheive. Whether they are "freedom fighters" or "terrorists" is not a very objective decision. As an aside, the concept that typical intergovernment war is more legitimate than violence without government sanction is bereft of ethicalness.
Hacking articles at http://www.geocities.com/chroo
Da Blog
I suspect they're badly wrong about the effects of a 1/363rd kiloton explosion. Only 5,500 pounds of a low-order explosive like blackpowder detonated below ground level would be very unlikely to cause severe structural damage to buildings more than 1/3 mile away, not least because most of the explosive effect would have been directed upwards. Also, blackpowder, like ammonium nitrate/fuel oil, is a heaving explosive rather than a shattering one. The low-frequency ground wave it generated would be unlikely to have sufficient amplitude at that distance to knock down buildings. Indeed, it would likely do no more than shake things up and knock things off shelves, unless London buildings in 1605 were very badly built. Compare, for example, the effects of the Oklahoma City bomb, which was detonated at ground level and used a more brissant explosive.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
Ehh? What are you smoking? The dressing up bit of Halloween has been going for many years, and is not from the US.
The only thing imported from the US is the concept of "trick or treat", which I don't agree with myself. Any kids play jokes on me, they'll get their legs broke!! If they turn up, be nice, do a party piece etc, I'll give 'em some fruit and chocolate, like everyone else has been doing for the past few decades.
...so I'm zipping to the top here, appologies for being on a different time zone and wanting my say!
But here is the quote that got my goat:
""From the amount of explosive that Guy Fawkes had we can work out that if you were a third of a mile away you should have been okay with just a few broken windows around you. Further away and you might have just heard some noise," he said."
It has always been though had Guy Fawkes been successful the Houses of Parliament and Palace off Westminster would have been destroyed. But a third of a mile?! So then Guy Fawkes would have blown up the Houses of Parliament and Palace of Westminster as planned, and this research reveals he would also have blown up a small area of Pimlico and even smaller area of Vauxhall - both residential areas belonging to the middle classes (note that circa this age the middle class were a small part of society that existed on service jobs for the very very rich upper classes).
1/3 of a mile is about 500 metres. That is not a lot. Compare that extra 500 metres of middle class families to the government of what was the bulk of the developed world. Sure the butterfly can flap its wings, but I'd put my money on the nuclear explosion less than 500 metres away.
-- Alchohol is a hard drug. Cannabis is a soft drug.
I think the attacks on the WTC are completely reprehensible and should be condemned universally. I also believe that when a military force kills thousands of civilians by 'accident' in their rush to accomplish military objective that is also a terrible occurrence. I even believe that a soldier killing another soldier is generally wrong and tragic. I would wager that more than 99% of all military casualties are inflicted by attackers who did not have any prior personal relationship with their target. I believe that aggressive violence is cruel, unjust, uncivil, and unethical regardless of how it is couched semantically or politically.
What I would point out about the WTC attacks is that they were not targeted towards a random place or even a place known for its high population. It was an attack on the Western economic forces which have been viewed as being largely inextricable from aggressive Western policies towards the some Middle East governments such as those advocated by the neo-conservatives. The military, economic, and political interests of the United States are so intertwined that the attack on the WTC was a strategic move against many aspects of the West that radical Middle Easterns were hostile towards.
In this way, it was rather like the U.S. invasion of Iraq: an aggressive action generalizing towards the furthering many U.S. aims in the region (viz. Project for the New American Century).
Hacking articles at http://www.geocities.com/chroo
...Trafalgar Square?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
My appologies.
-FL
My appologies. (Savor it. I don't screw up like this normally.)
-FL
Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.
luckily they stopped him... now london was only devastated in the big fire of 1666.
In retrospect, it didn't really matter. If London would have been blown up in '05, the newly built brick houses wouldn't have been swept by the flames a few decades later.
Considering that the 9-11 attacks were directed towards targets of strategic importance economically and governmentally, were the attackers freedom fighters? If the civilians are seen as participating in activities counter to the attackers goals, is attacking them a terrorist activity?
Yes. The intention was to make people afraid, to try to disrupt trade. The people were civilians, not military or other direct government representatives.
For example, would threatening or killing civilian informants to the Gestapo be terrorism?
Yes. Again, the idea would be to insprire fear in order to prevent more civilians informing to the Gestapo. In this situation, only directly attacking the Gestapo themselves would not be terrorism.
Terrorists nearly always have political goals that they are trying to acheive. Whether they are "freedom fighters" or "terrorists" is not a very objective decision.
I'm sorry, it definitely is. It relates entirely to the kind of tactics that are used, not to what the goal is.
http://physics.about.com/b/a/040095.htm contains such a map, showing the area of london that would have been pretty much leveled by Fawkes.
Joe Andersen http://physicsguide.blogspot.com